Tag Archives: piano

How to Start From Anywhere in Your Music

Welcome to LivingPianos.com, I’m Robert Estrin. Today, I’m going to show you how to start anywhere in your music. To have effective practice, you must be able to start anywhere. Let’s say you’re playing a piece of music. You mess up somewhere, and you keep starting at the beginning. Maybe the next time you get it, but you haven’t really solved the underlying weakness that caused that problem in the first place.

Being able to start where the correction is made is vital.

You want to be able to start where the correction is made, but sometimes it’s really hard to even find that place. I want to demonstrate this with a piece that’s difficult to start in the middle because it’s counterpoint. I’m going to use Bach’s Invention No. 1 in C major. Watch the video to see the demonstration! This piece does divide itself into some macro-sections that I can articulate for you. Suppose you have an issue in the middle of a section. So you decide to just start the whole section again. Whether you get it again or not, it doesn’t really matter because you still have the same odds moving forward of getting it or not getting it. Just finding the exact place is a big challenge! You must read your score and identify where it is. Now you know where to start, but you can’t start there. It seems totally foreign.

The reason it’s hard to start in the middle of a section is that you don’t know what fingering to use.

When you’re starting in the middle, it’s hard to figure out what fingering to use. So here’s the tip. Go back to a place you can start from. When you get to where the issue is, stop and pay close attention to what fingers are on what notes in each hand. Then you lock it in, and you can start from there. Now you can make the correction and get it solidified by playing through the passage a number of times. Then you go back to the beginning of that macro section and connect it several times until it is smooth.

To recap: Step one is: Find where the correction is. Step two: Go back to a place you can start from before that place. Step three: Lock in what fingers you use to start in that measure or phrase so you can effectively start there. Without this method, you get there, and it’s almost like you’re reading the music for the first time! It seems totally unfamiliar. Have you ever had that experience where you almost feel like you don’t even know the piece when you try to start in the middle? Your fingers know where to go, but you can’t solve the underlying weakness because you can’t start right at that particular spot. Well, now I’m giving you the tools to start from anywhere in any piece!

This is the way to have effective, productive practice!

Zero in on the places that need work and start from there. Solve those issues first, then correct them with the whole macro section. Try this in your practice! I guarantee that you will have a boost in productivity like you’ve never seen before! Let us know how it works for you in the comments here at LivingPianos.com and on YouTube! Thanks again for joining me, Robert Estrin, here at LivingPianos.com, Your Online Piano Resource.

For premium videos and exclusive content, you can join my Living Pianos Patreon channel! www.Patreon.com/RobertEstrin

Contact me if you are interested in private lessons. I have many resources for you! Robert@LivingPianos.com

How to Make Your Melody Float on Water

Welcome to LivingPianos.com, I’m Robert Estrin. Today I’m going to show you how to make your melody float on water. What am I talking about? You want to be able to have your melody soar above a bed of rippling currents. The accompaniment in the left hand is like the rippling waves, with the melody in the right hand floating above. I’m going to tell you how to achieve this!

You must find really great fingering for the left hand in order to achieve a delicate legato.

The way to discover good fingering is by practicing without the pedal. Support the melody in the right hand with a lot of arm weight, so the melody can be above the accompaniment, and then play with a very fluid legato in the left hand. By playing without the pedal, you can hear what’s involved in this process. You’ll hear the fluidity of the left hand. You have to find fingering that enables that kind of legato.

The other side of this is that you must have a buoyant melody that rises above the accompaniment.

Why is this so difficult? For two reasons. First of all, high notes don’t last very long on the piano compared to low notes. And on top of that, you have more notes in the left hand. The left hand is faster than the right hand, so it’s a double whammy. So you must create an angularity in your balance where the melody is much louder than the accompaniment. But how can you achieve it without making it sound harsh?

The secret is to transfer the weight of the arm smoothly from note to note.

Instead of articulating each separate note, use the weight of the arm to smoothly transfer from key to key achieving a fluid line, like the breath of a singer or the bow of a string player, so each note floats to the next. You can never achieve a smooth line by calculating from note to note. It will end up sounding calculated! When you transfer the weight of the arm smoothly from key to key, you get a fluid line. By doing this, you can play with tremendous energy without getting a harsh sound. Remember, the piano is a percussion instrument. When you’re playing a beautiful melody, how can you make it sound smooth? Use the weight of the arm in the right hand and a smooth left hand that’s very beautiful, but underplayed. Find a fingering where you can play that extreme legato.

Practice incessantly without the pedal so you can find the fingering that enables this.

That is the secret! Find great fingering in the left hand, practice without the pedal, and use the weight of the arm in order to get a smooth line. Try it in your playing! Let us know how it works for you in the comments here at LivingPianos.com and on YouTube! Thanks again for joining me, Robert Estrin, here at LivingPianos.com, Your Online Piano Resource.

For premium videos and exclusive content, you can join my Living Pianos Patreon channel! www.Patreon.com/RobertEstrin

Contact me if you are interested in private lessons. I have many resources for you! Robert@LivingPianos.com

How to Practice Bach: C Minor Prelude Well Tempered Clavier BK I

Welcome to LivingPianos.com, I’m Robert Estrin. Today, I’m going to show you how to practice Bach’s Prelude and Fugue in C Minor from book one of his Well-Tempered Clavier. First, I’m going to play it for you. Then I want to zero in on the fast section. The whole thing is 16th notes, and then just towards the end it gets fast. It’s a great prelude. I want you to hear it first, and then I’m going to show you a bunch of ways you can practice this prelude. Stay until the end, because the last technique I’m going to show you is the ultimate technique!

Some people spend countless hours learning exercises.

Instead of learning tedious exercises, you might as well use music to develop your playing. That’s exactly what I’m going to show you how to do here. I’m going to show you a whole bunch of ways you can practice this prelude. These methods are really valuable. It kind of turns this prelude into different exercises that have great value, not just for playing this piece but for developing your technique.

First, let’s talk about the obvious things you can do.

Turn the metronome on. Find a comfortable speed where you can play it accurately. At first, when you’re playing slowly, articulate each note with gently rounded, raised fingers. This way, you get precise release of notes so the notes don’t blur together. Take the tempo up one notch at a time. As you get faster, make the fingers more gently rounded, and stay close to the keys. Of course, you don’t raise your fingers when playing fast. It’s only a way to help you practice the release of notes when playing slowly. When you get faster, lighten up and stay close to the keys.

Another handy way of working on this is with different articulations.

For example, try playing with staccato fingers. Or you could play one hand staccato and the other hand legato. There are also different accents that you could use. You could do four-note groups. You can play with different rhythms. You can play with different dynamics in the two hands. Naturally, there are other things you can do—other rhythms or accents. Some people might even want to accent the offbeats. See the video for examples of each of these techniques!

You could just spend hours, days, weeks, months, or even years with this one prelude, turning it into hundreds of different exercises!

You can use these different practice techniques with your music instead of learning hundreds of different exercises, and you get the same value. Plus, you get the added benefit of learning a piece inside and out as a reward for your hard work.

As I promised, here is the ultimate practice technique.

I love this practice method because it really trains your hand and your brain to be able to play this piece by practicing different note groups. First, play through the section broken up into four-note groups. Then, when you get comfortable going through the whole section that way, you can practice playing groups of eight notes. And then you can play groups of 16 notes at a time. You can focus on sections that need work, and identify the precise group of notes that need to be solidified.

Zero in on the parts that need work.

You don’t necessarily have to go through the entire section with all these different methods I’m showing you. Maybe you can play a good deal of it cleanly, but you keep missing one part. Try the various practice techniques on that part. Zero in where you need it. You shouldn’t just do an equal amount of practice on all of it because you might not need equal amounts on all of it. Now, at the beginning, you may very well need to work on all of it. That’s why a great starting point is playing it with the metronome with raised fingers, articulating everything, and making sure you get it all clean. Do some metronome speeds just to get it under your fingers, then strategically use these practice methods. That way, you can take the parts that are weak and make them strong. Build note groups upon note groups, and strategically use all these different techniques to help you master not just this Bach prelude but any piece of music! It will help you develop your technique on the piano. I hope this is helpful for you! Thanks again for joining me, Robert Estrin, here at LivingPianos.com, Your Online Piano Resource.

For the sheet music for all the exercises mentioned and demonstrated, please visit: https://a2f360.myshopify.com/products/bach

How a Piano Move Put My Wife Into Labor

Welcome to LivingPianos.com, I’m Robert Estrin. Today I have a wild story for you about how a piano move put my wife into labor. This is a true story that you have to hear to believe!

I had a good friend at the time who was also a pianist and keyboardist.

This was at a time when keyboard technology was advancing rapidly. We were both totally enamored with the latest synthesizer gear. We were always buying new keyboards and other things, and we would get together to compare notes and just have a blast jamming together all the time. His mother had a Knabe grand piano. She was having some work done in her home, and she had to store the piano somewhere. So he asked me if I could possibly help with that. The only place we really had room for a piano was our living room, because at this time we had 27 pianos in our 1100-square-foot house! So we put it in our living room, and it was fine there. She also had a nice dining room table, and she asked us to store that too. We got rid of our junky dining set to make room for it. So we had her dining table and piano, and everything was fine.

At a certain point, she suddenly decided she had to have her piano back.

It was really weird because we knew each other really well. One time, we had her over to our house when my mother was visiting. We all had a good time together. I even played for her on her piano! But for some reason, she suddenly freaked out and absolutely had to get her piano and dining set back right away. I let her know that my wife was in her ninth month of pregnancy, and we wouldn’t have a table to eat at. But she was adamant about getting her things back. So we made arrangements to have the piano moved as soon as possible since she was so desperate about the whole situation for some unknown reason. So the move was arranged. At the same time, there was another piano that I needed to move.

On the same day, I was playing music for a wedding, so I couldn’t be there for the piano move.

I couldn’t be home for the move, but it wasn’t a problem because my piano tuner was also a skilled piano mover. But at the last minute, the people he usually used to help with moves weren’t available, so he had to get some other people to help with the move. That’s where the trouble began. They showed up to move the piano. My wife, being 9 months pregnant, was trying to keep our 2-year-old daughter away from the move. My friend was a really good piano mover, but he wasn’t much of a communicator.

At a certain point, nobody was holding onto the piano, and it started to tip over.

My wife saw the piano starting to fall and caught it just in time! Who knows what would have happened if that piano had been damaged. This woman was already really upset for no reason that we could ascertain. But fortunately, everything worked out. I got home, and we had a late dinner. Then, at 1:00 in the morning, we were about to go to bed, and my wife went into labor with our second child! The epilogue to the story is that everything worked out great. We have two wonderful, healthy children, and that woman got her piano back. So that story had a happy ending! Thanks again for joining me, Robert Estrin, here at LivingPianos.com, Your Online Piano Resource.

For premium videos and exclusive content, you can join my Living Pianos Patreon channel! www.Patreon.com/RobertEstrin

Contact me if you are interested in private lessons. I have many resources for you! Robert@LivingPianos.com

Why You Must Accept Your Limitations

Welcome to LivingPianos.com, I’m Robert Estrin. The subject today is about why you must accept your limitations. I don’t want to bring you down. As a matter of fact, it’s quite the opposite! Anybody who’s accomplished anything great, it’s because they accept their own limitations. You look at people who are masters at any craft or art, and you think everything must just come easily to them. What you don’t see is the hard work that goes into it. I can’t tell you how many times I have students who think they’re the only ones for whom piano is so hard. It’s actually really hard for everyone!

Different things are difficult for different people.

Some people excel at some things, and some people excel at other things. But the key to being able to accomplish anything is to accept where you’re at and what it takes to advance. And it takes way more than you think it does. This goes for everything. When you see a beautiful painting that’s absolutely photorealistic, you’re in awe of the quality of the work. You can’t imagine how it’s done. You might think the artist is just a genius and it comes naturally to them. But if you lived with that person, and watched them work, you’d realize the countless hours they spent working and crafting that painting to look like that. It doesn’t just happen. They accepted what it took to create that masterpiece. The same is true in your piano practice.

The learning process takes time and dedication.

It’s very easy to dismiss things and think, “I should be able to get this. Why can’t I get this?”. It’s because you’re human! I have a video that hasn’t come out yet. The editing has been mind-bogglingly difficult because I wanted to put the score in the whole video. I sat down for a while one day and practiced a piece that I had very briefly studied years and years ago. I just showed how I practice. It’s a Mozart fantasie, and there’s a fast section in there. I practiced just that part of it. It’s about a 40-minute practice session. I knew it was too long for anybody to watch.
So I have parts going in fast-motion. It shows how long I take to learn something—to really get it under my fingers and into my head. Just because I can play all this music from memory doesn’t mean that it just comes easily to me, It’s a meticulous process.

You can see for yourself how I learn a new piece of music!

I have a video I did years ago. I flipped open the Chopin Mazurkas randomly, found a mazurka I’d never even heard before, and started memorizing it. You can watch that here. You’ll see what it takes. So don’t beat yourself up! Accept that this is what it takes. Then you decide if it’s worth the effort or not. But to think that it should come easily—you’re not going to get anywhere with that type of thinking. You’ll just get frustrated, and you’ll think less of yourself. Just accept your limitations, and from there, you can accomplish almost anything! That’s the message for today. I hope it’s inspiring for you and not discouraging. Let me know in the comments here at LivingPianos.com and on YouTube! Thanks again for joining me, Robert Estrin, here at LivingPianos.com, Your Online Piano Resource.

For premium videos and exclusive content, you can join my Living Pianos Patreon channel! www.Patreon.com/RobertEstrin

Contact me if you are interested in private lessons. I have many resources for you! Robert@LivingPianos.com

5 Ways to Develop Your Sight-Reading

Welcome to LivingPianos.com, I’m Robert Estrin. Today I’m going to give you five ways to develop your sight-reading skills. Have you ever watched somebody who’s a good sight-reader play a piece of music they’ve never seen before, and it almost sounds like a performance, and wished you could do that? There are countless reasons why sight-reading is a joy if you can do it. In high school, I was a pretty advanced player, but my sight-reading was at an elementary level. I have a video about that. But today I’m going to give you practical tips that you can use to develop your sight-reading skills.

1. Choose pieces that are at your reading level.

I know it can be tempting. You hear a piece of music, and you want to play it so badly. So you try to read through it, and it’s such a struggle that it’s discouraging. More than that, you can’t really get a feel for the piece because you’re stopping and starting so many times. Accept the level that you are at and read pieces at that level. If you read enough of them, you will gain from the experience. Over time, you will grow and be able to read more complex scores.

TIPS FOR IMPROVING YOUR SIGHT-READING – SIGHT-READING PART 2

2. Play slowly enough.

You want to hear the piece the way it’s meant to be heard. Maybe the beginning isn’t that hard for you, so you take it at a comfortable tempo. But then you’re slowing down, speeding up, and stopping, and you really don’t get a feel for the piece. If you play slowly enough, it’s much more valuable. Even though it might seem frustrating at first, you will gain much more from the experience.

3. Have some pieces that are reading pieces.

I don’t know how many of you are like I was, but I used to memorize all my pieces. When it came to sight-reading, I just couldn’t do it. Well, an answer to that is to have some pieces that are reading pieces. Maybe there are pieces that you can’t really sight-read. You can read parts of it, but other parts are a struggle. Take those pieces and work on the parts you can’t read. Go through them, practicing hands separately, taking little phrases at a time, and get those sections so that you can read through them. You make it a reading piece that you never memorize. You always read it. You use the score, and you gain the confidence to be able to play the piece with the music. This is incredibly important if you ever want to play chamber music, because you’re not going to memorize every single thing that you want to read.

4. Look at groups of notes.

When you’re reading English, you’re not looking at letters; you’re looking at words. It’s the same thing with music. You don’t look at each individual note. You look at chords and clusters of notes, and you grab the meaning of the notes so you understand the essential structure. Instead of just painstakingly looking at each note, try to recognize patterns and intervals so you can grab groups of notes.

IMPROVE YOUR SIGHT-READING BY LOOKING AT CHUNKS OF MUSIC

5. Play with other musicians.

This is the most important tip of all, and this was my epiphany with reading. This is the way you truly learn to become a good sight-reader. Why? When you’re playing by yourself, when you miss something, it’s only natural to stop and make corrections. You’re programmed to do that in your practice. It’s almost impossible to keep going when you’re missing notes. But when you’re playing with other people, you have no choice but to keep going. So you learn to make that connection among the three aspects of what you see, what you hear, and what you feel.

THE 3 ESSENTIAL ELEMENTS OF SIGHT-READING

If you have any other tips for sight-reading that aren’t covered here, please leave them in the comments for other people. I know this is such an important subject for people. We all want to be better readers, and anything that helps is welcome. Thanks again for joining me, Robert Estrin, here at LivingPianos.com, Your Online Piano Resource.

For premium videos and exclusive content, you can join my Living Pianos Patreon channel! www.Patreon.com/RobertEstrin

Contact me if you are interested in private lessons. I have many resources for you! Robert@LivingPianos.com